That antiseptic smell, so familiar.
The steady dripping beside the bed.
The tick of the clock
The beep of the machines
The hum of a fan
Everything whispers from far away.
How long life can continue
Struggling in this tainted world.
Grief and salt mix, run from eyes filled with pain.
White petals flutter in the slight breeze.
The drip is stilled, the hum dies out.
All that is left is a steady ticking,
A slowly faltering beep.
The sheets, like flags in a mourning breeze, rise,
Then fall.
The beep is gone.
Life has flown.
And it seems there is a sigh,
One last utterance from that mortal coil.
The room is empty again,
Occupied by nothing but a bed.
The last petal withers, dies.
Following the life it tried to comfort.
This is a poem that I wrote about two months after my grandmother died of complications resulting from surgery to remove a tumor from her lung. She died in September of 1999.
Black Pearl
tossed away
shunned
dark moonlight against white water
an opalescent shimmer
black against
starry summer night
more humble in its beauty
than its pure-snow cousins
stepping into reflection
black unicorn
Balaam
Curse them
Them
Curse
Curse them
Stupid donkey
Move faster
Get going
Snap
Thump
Slap
Don't stop
Stupid donkey
Keep moving
Why are you beating me?
I am saving your life.
Don't you see the angel up ahead in the road?
Balaam
Do not curse my people
Do not curse
Bless my people
Bless them
Them
Bless
Bless them
Good donkey
Thank you
Thank you
Ode to Dragons
O, timeless imagination
sailing on bone-ribbed canvas
thru' the diamond studded,
velvet clad depths of night.
Moonlight glimmering
over dark cloaked scales.
Fluttering silk
shivering in the
jagged breeze
of long ago autumn.
You are more
than I am,
and yet...
you are me.
O, timeless wanderer
carry me away
from myself
and into
your shimmering
rainbows,
conjured by my imagination
of what
you should be.
